I'm Raising My Child to Know that the Cobras that Shiver in the Sky at Night Are Mistakes and Not Responsible for Us

When I was sixteen and a first semester junior in Aviday Ampsellesay's English class at Gaithersburg High School, it was two years out from Nixon's resignation and one year out from the fall of Saigon and Moscow was on the march and Jimmy Carter had just been kinged. Holyfuck, the number one song in America was Rod Stewart's fucking Tonight's the Night: how's that for perspective on toxic futures.

I had a blast my junior year in high school, couldn't give a shit about shit as long as Rod Goddamn Stewart wasn't on the stereo. I've survived all End Times since to bring you my daily End Times predictions.

I teach my sixteen year old too little cynicism, too little selfishness, too little self-interest, I teach her nothing beyond what she concludes herself about the nature and motives of others, I teach her to be nicer, more understanding and forgiving, to be Kinder than me.

Despite me, it's working. All Fleabus photos by Planet.

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• American Culture.
• America.
• Capitalism.
• Capitalism.
• America.
• American Yadda.
• Pussy Hatch.
• Obamapostasy.
• Obamapostasy.
• Something to think about.
• Your pwoggle spin on today's election results.
• Your asshole pig spin on today's election results.
• A fatuous referendum.
• Still the person I'd most like to brain w/a shovel.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Not American enough.
• Work:

• ICC's true purpose!
• No one could have predicted Smart Growth would lead to Clarksburgs.
• Clarksburg.
• On bleggal hiatusing.
• One aspect why black-and-white TV pings my pitchfork.
• The president of the University of Tulsa makes more than $1M per?
• Levi-Strauss has died. More.
• 24-Hours of Air Traffic.

UPDATE! Soehn "resigns". Post later. Or not.
Here's DCU Curmudgeon. Here's Fullback.

• Excellent HATING! on Little Danny Helmetball: "He looks like a cross between Mitt Romney and a male nurse, with a spray-helmeted cube of black mannequin hair atop the pinched, entitled face of a guy [complaining to] a Howard Johnson's waitress about his curly fries not being curly enough."
• Berbatov is.... The Continental.
• Barra Barra.
• Worst sports kits!
• Vote for the Worst Uniform Ever!
• Work:

• Who would purposely distance themselves from the fiction he's reading? ME! who opened up the daily random Moby Dick to a horrifically brutal (and beautifully written) scene of whales in agony, so I've called a time out on both daily random readings much less front to back for now, which isn't the distance meant at the link. Which is why I need read the novel again.
• Another review of the new Pamuk, which I will be reading, just when I'm not sure - I'm in Mexico City in 1976 chasing visceral realists right now.
• I'm not sure why the New York Review of Books feels a need to review each and every new William Trevor novel, nor why each review of each new William Trevor isn't required to use the JCO/Updike required word "prolific." (sub rqrd)
• Andrew addresses my Lessing problem.
• Oofdah: a takedown of Ashbery.
• New Ashbery.
• Remembering Conrad Aiken, whose poetry one girlfriend adored and one mentor despised.
• Wait until Ilse and Sasha see who's number one.
• Above three links courtesy Silliman's always generous blog.
• I'm not sure why there's a need for a new "selected" Wallace Stevens. (sub rqrd)
• Not why I'm not, but the point is to make you.
• Work

• This doesn't make my heart race, but I've friends that it will.
• Not only does Sting's music suck unto suck (I promise you you'll never suffer a crappy Police song on this bleg, I love you that much), Sting's a fracking asshole too. But you knew that.
• A Place to Bury Strangers.
• Witches want David Bowie's semen.
• You can't stay all day under the covers.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• We're made of blood and rust.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• UPDATE! Love for The Feelies!
• UPDATE! Does anyone remember The Softies?
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• The laws have changed.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• (I'm crazy for you) but not that crazy.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• The prettiest song you'll listen to today.

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SONG OF AMERICA

Rob Cook

I'm raising my child to become the end of rotting,
        and to expose the lushness of the cemetery moth.
I'm raising my child to know the difference between the two sunsets:
        one purple with thermonuclear iodine,
        the other the charred insides of rain.
I'm raising my child to find the stones his brothers fed each other.
I'm raising my child to fall behind the apricot blossoms
        and to trust only others who've fallen behind.
I'm raising my child to listen: there is so much noise
        only silence will be remembered.
I'm raising my child to fill in the spaces between wars
        and the spaces between people
        where everything grows even after the last space is gone.
I'm raising my child to bring into the world books that suffer
        with words detention-kids make over and over.
I'm raising my child to follow the scatter of flesh across the sky,
        birds and their wingprint trails to Alaska.
I'm raising my child to predict the sicknesses left of summer
        by the number of shadows he sweats.
I'm raising my child to plant pennies where he'll find rest
        and good fingerpaint for one night.
I'm raising my child to chop down the televisions of peasants
        and their machine that picks thunderstorms from a leaf.
I'm raising my child to write a treaty for his own smells,
        the ones that hurt the self and the ones that hurt others,
        and a treaty for the poison sumac whose only emotion is hunger.
I'm raising my child to dress like a long line of near-humans
        if he wants to be recognized
        and to show kindness to the roadkill that sneaks into his bed.
I'm raising my child to know which part of a hamburger is still afraid.
I'm raising my child to be captain of the abandoned mail trucks
        and to lead the grasses across the Midwestern sleep.
I'm raising my child to leave New York.
I'm raising my child to add letters and numbers to his name
        and chameleons and hellbenders behind his name.
I'm raising my child to drown and to drop dead and to carry buildings on his back.
I'm raising my child to listen to his face breaking when it's cold.
I'm raising my child to seduce only photographs of women.
I'm raising my child to know that the cobras that shiver
        in the sky at night are mistakes and not responsible for us.
I'm raising my child to leave bread for the voices that come after dark.
I'm raising my child to keep his eyes closed.
I'm raising my child to tell the truth by having no sound at all.

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So what I posted this before?